The Women of 24

I have been noticing something interesting while watching -24- this season. And thinking back it's been true the last four seasons as well. Women are a huge component of this show. And they all either have secret agendas, personal relationships that must remain secret, feminist hang ups or are on the verge of a psychological or emotional meltdown. Conversely, the men are usually moving the story foreward under the constant stress of the terrorist attacks and facing self-sacrifice in the line of duty. But it seems that the women are there to get in the way and complicate things. To slow down the resolution of the story.

Now, before all of my female readers start forming a lynch party, hear me out. I'm saying that it is the writers of the show who are responsible for this. I'm just making the observation. I think there are a lot of great actresses on this show doing a helluva job. It's just that the job they are given to do is to be obstacles.

If you don't believe me let's take a quick look at last night's episode:

• Karen Hayes from Homeland Security is running CTU and seems to constantly have a different agenda from what Jack needs to do.
• Collette Stinger, terrorist, claims that Audrey Raines sold info to the terrorist group and that she (Collette) was just the broker and had no idea what the schematic was for.
• Jack finds out from Chloe O'Brian that Audrey has slept with Walt Cummings, former White House Chief of Staff turned current dead traitor.
• Karen wants to torture Audrey for more info.
• Jack wastes time argueing with Karen and interrogates Audrey.
• Audrey lies to Jack about Walt.
• Sheri Rothenberg replaces poor dead Edgar and Chloe gives her attitude.
• Karen still wants to torture Audrey.
• Miles has a problem with Sheri working at CTU and Chloe finds out that Sheri had filed a sexual harrassment complaint against Miles in the past.
• Jack still thinks it's a waste of time to torture Audrey when they could be torturing Collette who, unfortunately, has Presidential immunity. Unless Jack can prove she has lied in order to get the immunity.
• Chloe finds a connection between Collette and Henderson, proving Collette was lying to obtain the immunity, thus nullifying it.
• Jack finally gets Collette to reveal what was in the schematic that she sold to the terrorists.
• Chloe and Sheri use their wiz-kid know how to pinpoint the site of the next attack.
• Jack rushes off to save the day.
• Sheri starts building a sexual harrassment case against Buchanan because his hand brushed her shoulder.
• The terrorists do some more bad stuff, Jack and the team fight back and everybody at the gas plant gets blown up. Or do they?

That's a pretty typical episode.

And don't forget all the other females in all the other sub-plots such as Kim Bauer who won't cut Jack any slack once she finds out that Jack (her father) is not dead and Martha Logan, the first lady, who drifts between total schizo to the only voice of reason.

OK, what does all of this mean. It means -24- is a really exciting, edge-of-the-seat, must see show with plenty of action, plot twists and great performances. AND that the writers mostly use the female characters as plot devices to slow down the action of the main story line because they have to make it last 24 episodes.

So it occurred to me, that if there weren't any women in -24-, it could have probably been called -3- or possibly -6- at the most.